


Only Waking When I Sleep

by moss28



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 20:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11169864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moss28/pseuds/moss28
Summary: Waylon dreams, sometimes. He dreams of Mount Massive and what it took from him, of his kids and his family and everything he's left behind.And sometimes, Waylon dreams of Miles.





	Only Waking When I Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lobsterkaijin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterkaijin/gifts).



> A little birthday gift for [camerashippping](http://camerashippping.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr <3\. Waylon is based on the interpretation she writes over [here](http://sschnsucht.tumblr.com/), and Miles is based on my interpretation from [here](http://walridiing.tumblr.com/).

The dreams aren’t _always_ bad.

They’re just… _mostly_ bad.

Well, no, perhaps that’s an exaggeration in and of itself. It’s just that the _bad_ has a funny way of outweighing the _good_ and even the _mundane_ , when he has a moment to reflect upon it all. He doesn’t count them, doesn’t keep a tallied record of which nights produce the usual, nonsensical drivel and which ones are filled with sheer mind-numbing terror. There’s no official scorecard to tell him which side of his subconscious is winning.

But the results are etched in the lines of exhaustion below his eyes all the same.

The truth is: there are a lot of bad nights. Nights where he wakes screaming, nights where he’s pinned by a silent shadow and finds himself completely unable to move. Sleep paralysis, they call it. Completely scientific, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing supernatural. Something about hiccups in REM cycles, though he doesn’t much care for the technicalities of the _why_ or the _how_. All that matters is that it’s horrific when it’s happening, and it feels like all the things Murkoff had been trying to stir up in their research. It _feels_ , frankly, like the Walrider has come for him at last.

He has to remind himself, sometimes, that he’s never properly interacted with the creature. He’d seen it in Mount Massive, of course, in the periphery of his vision and in the inky blotches left in the wake of the Engine. And then there was the Administration Block, watching the Swarm rip apart his ( _former_ ) boss as effortlessly as a child might dismember a paper doll.

It hadn’t paid him much mind aside from that, though. The chase it had given had been brief, almost _fleeting_ when stacked against everything else the asylum had thrown at him. All things considered, the Walrider had never felt like a direct threat until its Host showed up on his doorstep.

His subconscious has latched onto that fact, it would seem. When he’s awake, it’s easy – _too easy_ , something inside of him says, something he’d rather not listen to – to look at Miles and just see _Miles_. A stubborn reporter with an easily exploitable soft streak. The kind of person who was as liable to pick fights with bigoted strangers as he was to tear up over a missing dog poster. Whatever lurked below the surface was background noise. But his head hit the pillow, and suddenly the lines weren’t so easily defined. Suddenly the Walrider and Miles were two halves of the very same whole, one beginning where the other ended, smoky limbs and dark eyes and decaying features, Miles’ face contorting into something unrecognizable but _the voice was always his_. God, the _voice_ , Miles’ in tone but the Swarm’s in words as it echoed back every dark, crippling thought that rattled about in his static-infested head. It knows just what to say, exactly which insecurities to hone and sharpen and drive into his gut like an unforgiving blade. There’s something _intimate_ about it, every time, and it’s only worsened by the fact that the abuse is coming from a familiar face.

(The day that follows such nightmares might be worse than the visions themselves. The real Miles always looks skittish, sympathetic, when he catches his eye after he wakes. Like he _knows_.)

But the dreams aren’t _always_ bad.

This one, for example, is pretty damn _good_.

It’s a Sunday morning – a date confirmed by no calendar but by the simple and infallible logic of dreams – and he’s still in bed. Sunlight filters through the blinds, shafts of white gold stretching along the floor and up the wall. He’s alone in the bed but the other side of it is still warm, the pillows still depressed slightly where a head must have recently been. He stretches, languishing in the pull of muscle down both of his complete, unmarred legs, before pushing off the covers and setting his feet on the floor. As he leaves the bedroom he’s greeted enthusiastically by one member of the adopted dog quartet as another one trots down the hall towards the kitchen in front of him. There are voices, laughter, the sound of clanking pots and utensils, all of which guide him towards the apparent center of action.

Miles is standing at the stove, struggling to keep a pan of eggs from burning, while the boys flick clumps of dry pancake mix at one another. There’s silence when he enters, as though he’s just caught _three_ children in an unruly act, before all of them break into easy laughter. Miles mumbles a curse under his breath as food starts to smoke. Somehow, though, they manage to get things relatively under control. It’s a group effort and it’s _nice_. Domestic simplicity with no catch, no dark edge to taint a picturesque morning. They sit at the table together and the boys only argue a little, and Miles sips his sugary coffee from a mug held between hands that have never known the bite of bone shears, and nothing hurts and nothing is wrong. Everything is as it should be – they’re a _family._

And, as with most good things in his life, the scene doesn’t last.

He wakes up with no concept of what day of the week it is. The sky is overcast and the light coming through the window is faint and muddled by cloud cover. He’s alone in the bed but the other side of it is cold and untouched. Getting up and getting his prosthetic situated on his truncated leg is a chore, one that he can’t help but resent. The dogs are nowhere to be found. He pushes himself off the bed, anyway, as ready to face the day as he can bring himself to be.

On the other side of the bedroom door, he becomes aware of voices in the kitchen. One voice, to be more specific, murmuring unintelligible words interspersed with moments of soft laughter. He pauses and rubs at his eyes, wondering blearily if he’s caught in another dream. But he shakes his head and the sound is still present, so he presses forward to see what he’s missing out on.

Miles is sitting at the kitchen table like he belongs there. Like he’s always belonged there. Two Styrofoam cups of coffee rest on the tabletop alongside two diner-made containers of breakfast foods. The dogs are crowded around him, yipping happily as he tears pieces off a strip of bacon and tosses them to whoever responds first to trick commands. When he looks up and smiles it feels like shafts of white gold light are stretching along the floor and up the wall, like warm covers and rumpled pillows on the other side of the bed, like a lazy Sunday morning with all the fixings.

It feels like every good thing about the dream, only _better_.

“Morning, Waylon.”

It feels _real_.


End file.
